Geography/social studies teachers, I found a tool you might be able to use with your students. Sporcle’s games include several geography games (the US and its capitols, the six inhabited continents) that will challenge your students to learn more about their world. As a bonus, when your students become curious about these countries, they can click on the most missed links on each game, which will not only list the states or countries in order that most people get them correct, but also have Wikipedia links to articles about that place. As students learn their geography, the challenge will be to improve their speed. A caveat: the games are hosted on a “sporting oracle” site that could potentially be used for betting purposes. Another warning: the games are really addictive.
Category Archives: Web 2.0
Video and Animoto
Some of you may already be familiar with Philip Scott Johnson‘s videos on YouTube, but in case you aren’t, here is a sample (one of his more popular videos):
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/nUDIoN-_Hxs" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Johnson’s videos have a lot of potential for use in art and social studies classes. In the tradition that a picture is worth a thousand words, his videos will speak volumes to students studying topics as diverse as the Civil War, geography, film, and Picasso.
After your class has viewed a Johnson video, it might be fun for them to use Animoto to create a similar video. Here is an Animoto video I created using old photographs of my family:
Students 2.0
I was thrilled today when my 9th grade students told me they created a study group on Facebook to keep up with work in my class and help each other as they study Romeo and Juliet. When they told me, they were almost sheepish, as if they were afraid they were doing something wrong. I told them it was an excellent use of Facebook, as far as I was concerned. I do wish the students would make use of the commenting aspect of the blog I’ve set up for study purposes, but I am glad they are making use of social networking in such a positive way.
I have asked them to memorize Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” speech, too. Unable to find a complete version of the speech online that they could hear, they created a YouTube video in which one the students reads the speech. Their thinking was that they could play the video and recite along with it. I decided it was an excellent idea. I recorded myself reading the speech in mp3 format so they can download it to their mp3 players and practice on the go. If you are curious, here it is, but don’t laugh at my voice:
I’m really excited to see my students refute the naysayers and use technology like Facebook and YouTube in such positive and helpful ways. The fact is that if we do teach students how to use these tools for such purposes, they will. I use YouTube in my classroom all the time. Facebook is blocked at school, and I understand why, but I am excited that they use the site at home for schoolwork in addition to socializing.
Moodle
Have any of you used Moodle? What do you think of it? What do you like about it? Please share your comments; I am thinking about using it, but I would like some more information from users first.
Happy New Year
This year, I had the opportunity to teach British literature for the first time — the course that made me want to teach English — and I had a wonderful time. I will be handing the course over to a colleague, and I hope she will enjoy it, too.
I also had the opportunity to go on a trip with the juniors last January.
My students collaborated with the Reflective Teacher’s class on a Holocaust project and with students at Neveh Channah Torah High School for Girls on a Israel/Judaism project.
I had the opportunity to meet up with other edubloggers at EduBloggerCon.
I was delighted to be invited to blog with Grant Wiggins. My teaching practices were transformed by his book with writing partner Jay McTighe, Understanding by Design, and I consider it one of my greatest accomplishments this year that the UbD Educators wiki was established, even if it became somewhat quiet. I hope it will catch on, and I still occasionally receive requests to join it.
In the coming year, it is my hope that my proposal for a course centered around Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces will be accepted and that I will be teaching British literature again. I would also love the opportunity to participate in more Flat Classroom projects with other schools and teachers — interested parties feel free to contact me. I am looking forward to reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman as part of an online PLU course I am taking beginning next week.
The Faculty Room
Meg Fitzpatrick, editor of of the UbD e-journal Big Ideas, invited me to contribute to both the e-journal and a new blog they are announcing today: The Faculty Room. Please come on over and join in our conversations (my first post on the blog should appear some time tomorrow). You will find other “familiar faces” over there. Also, now seems as good a time as any to remind you that the UbD Educators wiki is a good resource for you to post, share, “borrow,” and obtain or leave feedback on UbD lesson plans.
GISA Conference
I went to the annual Georgia Independent School Association (GISA) Annual Conference today. I ate lunch with Megan; it’s cool to see connections I made through this blog become “real-life” connections as well. Incidentally, Megan presented a session on using social bookmarking (such as del.icio.us). The two sessions I went to were very interesting (which hasn’t always been the case at GISA — the session I presented last year included): Fantasy Literature (teaching The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potter along with Campbell’s ideas about the journey of the hero) and Blogs and Wikis in the Classroom. Frankly, I confess I went to the latter to see if a) it would be better than the session I presented last year (it was), b) what the presenters would say. I did not expect to learn about anything new. Of course, I did learn about some things that were new to me, at any rate.
One thing that interested me in particular about the Fantasy Literature session was that so many other schools already have this class as an elective. A teacher from Pace Academy shared his successes teaching the course to 8th graders, and a teacher from Griffin Christian High School shared that he teaches The Lord of the Rings for the first semester of 9th grade, teaching all the literary terms, etc., through the context of that work. I taught The Hobbit one year — when I was a student teacher, in fact — and I found that students in general didn’t like it much, but I think as part of an elective, it would be a different crowd. Frankly, I could see myself really enjoying such a class.
The blogs and wikis session introduced me to Voice Thread, which Megan mentioned also at lunch. I imagine if you hear about something twice in such a short span of time, someone’s trying to send a message. For the uninitiated, Voice Thread is online software that allows users to create documentaries using images and creating narration to accompany the images. Check out this sample of its use: Slavery in America (by Jeff Morrison’s middle school students at the Lovett School). Jeff (one of the presenters) also introduced us to TrackStar, which somehow went under my radar, even though I’ve used 4Teachers‘ other service RubiStar to create rubrics.
I am thinking about ways I might integrate some of these resources with my current projects — The Canterbury Tales and The Odyssey. You can view Jeff’s wiki, which has links to a bunch of sources he shared with us.
One of my favorite parts of Jeff’s presentation was a video he shared:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/1SmgLtg1Izw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
As Jeff said, that is what it is like to teach. Especially middle school.
By the way, I am now receiving e-mails when comments are posted. I kept my eyes on the WordPress Support forums’ thread related to my problem, and eventually, someone posted a solution that worked for me. I uploaded a plugin created to work around the problem.
Any True Crime Fans?
I guess fans isn’t the right word, is it? I mean, that sounds kind of like you “like” the fact that crime exists. At any rate, my husband is a true crime writer, and he will be appearing on a special for Court TV — MyCase.com:
The internet provides a startling new look into the mind of a criminal. Profiles are posted on personal web sites, motives revealed in online blogs, and premeditated plans detailed on email. There’s a new type of investigator following the trail: the Cyber-sleuth. They will show us that, online, we are closer than we realize to clues and insight into criminal minds. TV-14
You can learn more about it at his blog.
Web 2.0
I’m kind of confused.
I thought I knew what Web 2.0 was, and frankly I was and am excited about some of the possibilities it holds for my students, particularly wikis.
But I’m going to admit after reading Clay’s post here, and Will’s post here, I’m not sure anymore.
What do we really want to accomplish with Web 2.0 technologies? What do you think Clay and Will are saying? (And I’d encourage you to continue the conversation on their blogs as well as mine, as I’m not sure they’ll see it here if you have something to address to them personally.)
[tags]web 2.0, wikis, education[/tags]
Google Maps
I introduced my six-year-old daughter Maggie to Google Maps, and it has become one of her favorite websites. We sat down together a couple of weeks ago, and just for fun, I showed her our city, our house, her school, and a few other landmarks I knew she would recognize. I also showed her how to zoom out so she could see the whole world. She particularly likes to look at Japan. She mentioned that characters in a cartoon she watches live there. I tried to show her the Great Wall of China, but I had trouble seeing it. I did show her the Eiffel Tower, and if you haven’t checked it out, you should. I can’t post a screencap because I think it violates Google’s Terms of Use, but you can easily locate it simply by typing “Eiffel Tower, France” into the search bar.
I can hear Maggie talking to her father in the other room as I write this, and she just told him that Russia is the biggest country in the world. This, of course, is something she figured out by looking at Google Maps, and not something she learned in kindergarten. She is always sharing interesting facts about what she learns from Google Maps. For instance, when I came in the room where we keep the family computer this morning, I discovered she had figured out how to search for pizza restaurants in Japan. And there are a few by the way. And more than you’d think in Cairo, too. A little while ago, we looked at the Pyramids in Egypt. Maggie likes to switch to hybrid view so she can see both the satellite image and the place names and roads — it helps her navigate better.
She has mastered using the Firefox search bar to look for cat videos in YouTube, too, but this post is about Google Maps, isn’t it? What an interesting way for a six-year-old to discover her world. I remember I had an old Replogle globe. I used to spend a lot of time looking over the globe and imagining the far away places on my map. I never could have dreamed the extent to which we can go there with current technology. Not only that, but it has some amazing implications for teaching.
I’ll admit to being a novice in terms of teaching with Google Maps and Google Earth, but after seeing how much my daughter has learned, and — and this is important, too — how much fun she has, I admit I’m brainstorming ways to incorporate Google Maps into my own curriculum.
[tags]google maps, earth, globe[/tags]